Caroline Brehman/Congressional Quarterly via ZUMA

You might be wondering why Republicans are almost all backing Donald Trump’s ridiculous claim that he won the election, and it’s only massive voter fraud that makes it look like he lost. What’s the point? They all know that Trump will lose his court challenges, and in the meantime they look like idiots.

The answer is pretty simple: they want to enter the Biden presidency with their base riled up about a stolen election. Maybe Lindsey Graham will start up an endless Senate investigation to keep it fresh in everyone’s mind. This provides Republicans with a great excuse to obstruct everything Biden tries to do, and two years from now it gives them a great foundation to turn out their base and win back the House.

Is this disgusting and obscene? Of course it is. But what else would you expect from the party of Benghazi and Hillary’s emails and Hunter’s laptop and Fox News? A party that knows only how to attack and nothing else?

Still, having said that, about half the country feels just fine supporting a party that acts this way. The rest of us better figure out what to do about that.

This is a picture of sunrise on the southern border. And who knows? Maybe it represents a real sunrise in our immigration policy. We can hope.

Chuck Myers/ZUMA

It’s not as though this is surprising, but still:

A Trump administration appointee is refusing to sign a letter allowing President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team to formally begin its work this week, in another sign the incumbent president has not acknowledged Biden’s victory and could disrupt the transfer of power.

….But by Sunday evening, almost 36 hours after media outlets projected Biden as the winner, GSA Administrator Emily Murphy had written no such letter. And the Trump administration, in keeping with the president’s failure to concede the election, has no immediate plans to sign one.

….The delay has implications both practical and symbolic. By declaring the “apparent winner” of a presidential election, the GSA administrator releases computer systems and money for salaries and administrative support for the mammoth undertaking of setting up a new government — $9.9 million this year.

Transition officials get government email addresses. They get office space at every federal agency. They can begin to work with the Office of Government Ethics to process financial disclosure and conflict-of-interest forms for their nominees. And they get access to senior officials, both political appointees of the outgoing administration and career civil servants, who relay an agency’s ongoing priorities and projects, upcoming deadlines, problem areas and risks. The federal government is a $4.5 trillion operation, and while the Biden team is not new to government, the access is critical, experts said. This is all on hold for now.

The Trump team is determined to leave office the same way it spent its four years in office: throwing tantrums every time it doesn’t get its way. And Republican leaders, who ought to have finally broken free of the spell Trump has had them under, are apparently still afraid to incur his wrath and tell him to go home. If this is a harbinger of how Mitch McConnell plans to treat Biden after the inauguration, it’s gonna be a long four years.

I don’t remember where I saw this, but a few days ago I came across a recent study that compares the US to other countries on the question of how much we hate the other political party. The authors created an overall metric for “affective polarization,” but I think it’s more interesting to break it into its two components. Here they are:

On the left, the US is quite high on dislike of the other party (i.e., what Democrats think of Republicans and vice versa). At the same time, the US is quite low on a measure of how much we like our party. In other words, most of us, on average, kind of hate both our own party and the other party. And this feeling has been growing over time.

The authors include some speculation about why this is, which you can read for yourself if you click the link. It’s mostly speculation, though, so I’m going to skip it for now. I just wanted to present this empirical evidence for its own sake, as something to ponder over.

Here’s the coronavirus death toll through November 8. The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.

Yesterday’s survey about Donald Trump’s future was my most popular ever! It got nearly 4,000 responses, and the easy winner was a prediction that Trump will start up a TV network and continue ranting at us. Here are the full results:

Here’s the coronavirus death toll through November 7. The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.

Here’s a short little survey for you:

CNN

CNN has called the election for Joe Biden after the latest vote dump from Pennsylvania. And if you can’t trust CNN, who can you trust?

Here’s the coronavirus death toll through November 6. The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.